I love how December overflows with an air of celebration, festive traditions and a focus on giving. Pauses in our usual work pace allow space to engage on a deeper level with friends, family and colleagues. The magnified power of hope, faith and love abounding is infectious. 

This past year has brimmed with blessings and I thank God for enabling me to leap over hurdles and shimmy around obstacles with a smile on my face. Still, I sometimes despair for the overwhelming issues facing our community and world. My role as publisher of a magazine for thinking people has me often confronting information about scary challenges.

Whether or not I want to know about them, I feel privileged to help do something for them by facilitating the awareness that facilitates action as Metroplex readers join hands with 3.8 million Natural Awakenings readers in 90 cities nationwide and millions of other caring citizens. Together, we rise up to counter threats posed by the likes of Monsanto, fracking companies, global warming and what I see as the biggest threat of all to the sustainability of life on Earth: our failure to embrace the Golden Rule of loving our neighbors as ourselves.

God’s creation is made to be self-sustaining; all that is needed is already provided within and around us. It’s the strange, alien, unfamiliar or inappropriate junk that humans introduce into Earth’s biosphere and our own bodies that causes problems. Why do we do this? A little online research shows that at almost every turn, bad results are motivated by hunger for some personal or collective gain at the expense of someone else. Even when the ensuing harm is less deliberate than ignorant, it represents a failure to think through actions and take steps to ensure that we “first do no harm.”

We hope that this month’s Awakening Humanity issue will remind us all to regularly re-commit to being more conscious of the impact of our decisions and choices and thoroughly consider the causes and laws that we support. On the local, state and national legislative scene,we can hold accountable those we elected to represent tus to make good-spirited laws and rules that help and benefit our neighbors.

In this new year I am vowing to love more, be more compassionate and consider the effect of my decisions on others. Will you join me?

Holiday and new year blessings from our house to yours,

Bernice Butler, Publisher

P.S. Natural Awakenings of the Dallas-Ft.Worth Metroplex is upping our game this month. Readers can now access our newly mobile-optimized website by scanning the QR code in each issue. It’s an easy gateway to natural health news, events and advertiser coupons and promotions. (We can also help local businesses build their own cost-effective mobile-optimized sites. Just call for information.)